The Environmental Film Festival is On Now

Just accept impending doom? Or get our acts together? EFF will get you thinking.

Banking Nature

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Banking Nature

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The Man from Coxs River

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Published on 08 September 2015

by David Bulafkin

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The Environmental Film Festival started in 2010 as the EFF Melbourne, expanding to Canberra and Hobart for the first time this year as EFF Australia.

One of the key themes of this year’s event is waste, including from food, plastics and electronics. Many of the films, documentaries and shorts being screened ask: can we better use what we have?

Local designers, restaurants and architecture do promote ideas that reduce the impact of business on the environment. But Chris Gerbing, co-director of the festival, thinks we need to do more to inspire action at a personal level. “Film is a really powerful medium to do that,” he says. “It looks at environmental issues in new and unique ways.”

Banking Nature, for example, takes a provocative look at the monetisation of endangered species. Does putting a price on nature help protect it? The festival’s Closing Night feature Landfill Harmonic, tells the story of a town in Paraguay built on landfill. Its residents build musical instruments from garbage and form an orchestra.

There are also stories from closer to home, such as The Man From Coxs River, which remind us, as former leader of The Australian Greens Bob Brown, says, "These issues are not all happening in faraway places, they are happening right here on our doorstep - and, it’s time for all Australians to stand up and be a part of the solution.”